


Marozi

by pentapus



Series: Baby's first pulse weapon [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, Gen, somewhere on an alien planet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 12:47:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentapus/pseuds/pentapus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We just--uh, lost the jumper,” Rodney says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marozi

**Author's Note:**

> For [picfor1000](http://picfor1000.livejournal.com) with a lovely cover by [Siria](http://siriaeve.dreamwidth.org).

 

Rodney has his head down, so it’s not until the toes of his boots are already wet that he looks up and sees the three unwashed, leather-clad people staring at him from the opposite bank. They’re armed--older Genii-make, well-maintained--and as shocked as Rodney to find the uninhabited planet suddenly habited. Rodney says intelligently, “Gah!”

The tallest says something to the woman next to him in a dialect of Ancient. It’s not complimentary. The youngest, a girl of maybe eight, shrugs and shifts her bulky rifle to her back, more trusting than her companions.

Behind him, Teyla and Sheppard crunch quickly across the ground cover of dead leaves. Teyla lets out a relieved breath when she sees the newcomers. Sheppard’s not so convinced. The woman sees Teyla’s forearm and switches to the trade language, concerned: “You’re injured.”

“Only kind of,” Sheppard hedges.

“I am well,” Teyla agrees.

“We just--uh, lost the jumper,” Rodney adds, babbling. Teyla makes a decision, dropping her sidearm to point at the ground, touching the Colonel’s elbow.

The girl speaks in the same variant of Ancient, wheedling, though Rodney can’t make out the meaning this time. Whatever it is, the two adults go lax, letting their rifles hang from their shoulder straps. Reluctantly, Sheppard lowers his weapon.

“You here to hunt?” the man asks, like the stand off never happened. He’s enormous--at least in the vertical. The woman lifts a water flask wrapped in a hairy animal skin from the girl’s neck, bending to fill it in the stream. From the sound it makes as she unscrews it, it’s metal, with a plastic cap. The girl stays standing, watching the Lanteans with sharp, dark eyes. Rodney spots a dim glow under her braided hair in the pack over her shoulder--it’s the glow of a pulse weapon.

“Not so much with the hunting,” Sheppard says, uncomfortable but friendly. The hand hanging by his sidearm keeps curling restlessly.

“Lost your ship,” the man concludes.

“Well--yeah,” Sheppard admits. They fall into an awkward silence waiting for the woman to finish with her family’s canteens. The man doesn’t help; he’s standing guard.

The woman stands; holds out a hand towards Teyla. Underneath the dirt her skin is pale and smooth, urban. Her two companions are darker, their hair rougher, but they’re the same. “Please, let me,” she says. “I was a healer.”

The _before the Wraith_ at the end of her sentence is understood, and suddenly, Rodney knows what Teyla recognized so easily about these people, as only a native of Pegasus could. They’re the victims of a culling.

Teyla makes the first move, stepping into the stream. She and the other woman touch hands warmly. It’s free of ritual, an instinctual comfort that the two of them have exchanged.

“We are going to mourn our dead,” the woman says. “Will you come?”

It isn’t until Teyla says, “Of course,” that Rodney realizes the offer isn’t as strangely invasive as it seems. This is Pegasus. That every traveler carries their own list of dead is assumed. 

“This way,” the woman says.

The girl, still staring, turns and says something to her father in the other language. He answers her in the trade language looking at Rodney, then Sheppard. “Guess so,” he says wryly. Then the three of them are turning and walking off. A shrug beckons Rodney’s team after.

Rodney shoves himself into Teyla’s space. Sheppard comes down the slope to join them.

“Your participation is unnecessary--” Teyla begins, conciliatory.

“We’ll participate,” Sheppard says, and it’s decided. Rodney tries to imagine who he’ll pray for and thinks of his grandmother--a vague blur of shag carpeting and peanut butter--but not of his parents.

Quietly, they follow the small family up a gentle slope, through bare, brittle trees. They cross a ridge and then another, zigzagging as the incline increases, until they reach a break in the trees at a rocky hilltop, drifts of red leaves gathered in stone corners.

Rodney, Teyla, and Sheppard stand under the gray sky like a triplet of extraneous wheels--third, fourth, and fifth--while their hosts prepare for mourning. The girl sweeps a spot at the crest of the hill free of dirt and leaves while her father disassembles a cairn of smooth stones blocking a hollow in the rock. His wife takes out a brown paper packet tied with string. The paper holds something Rodney mistakes at first for sticks, then for peculiar cigars. 

It’s not until her husband takes a small stone vessel, chipped with age, from its hiding place that Rodney understands. The healer turns to them, holding out her open hands with the incense sticks laid across them. “Who are you?” she says with a ritualistic rhythm.

Teyla takes one. “I am Teyla Emmagen.”

Then Sheppard, awkwardly: “John Sheppard.”

Rodney fumbles it, nearly drops it. “Dr. Rodney McKay,” he says, ignoring the look Sheppard shoots him. Sheppard lights their incense with his lighter, and they add them to the bowl now resting in a cleared depression in the stone. The girl crouches over it protectively, proud of her responsibility. Wind picks at her hair.

When her mother offers her the incense packet, she says matter-of-factly, “Keller,” as her father hands her a lighter--more pulse technology.

“ _Killer_?” Rodney blurts rudely, then flinches in embarrassment. Sheppard and Teyla are both glaring at him.

“It’s alright,” her mother promises. She reaches out absently to rearrange the lay of the pack and rifle across her daughter’s shoulders. There’s something hard in her voice that wasn’t there before. “The meaning is almost the same. _Keller_ \--the one who defeats Kell.”

“Oh,” Rodney says, stunned.

Then she’s taking her own incense stick--“Melena Arken”--and arranging it in the bowl.

The father is last. Very patriarchal, Rodney thinks. He lights his stick from his wife’s, staring a long time at her face and his daughter’s. At last, he sets it in the bowl next to the others, saying solemnly, “Ronon Dex.”

**Author's Note:**

> From wikipedia, Marozi is a spotted lion, extinct, possibly a naturally occuring lion/leopard hybrid. It's the title because 1) "Neat!", 2) Ronon is lethal, and 3) because this story used to be about Teyla turning into a jaguar and biting people in the face.
> 
> I've chosen not to add Ronon as a character tag to the story to preserve the surprise.


End file.
